Mazda celebrates its 100^th anniversary

Mazda made its debut in the year 1920. Since then, Mazda vehicles have garnered fans in more than 130 countries throughout the world. The history of Mazda began in Hiroshima, where the company’s corporate headquarters are currently located. Every step in the process of creating Mazda vehicles—from development and production to promotion and sales—is concentrated in one place. Hiroshima plays host to Mazda’s designers, engineers, factory workers and marketing experts, resulting in a unified team that creates extraordinary vehicles.

Kiyoshi Fujiwara, the Representative Director of Mazda in Japan, always dreamed of designing the best car in the world. By following a different path from that of other manufacturers, he and his team succeeded in creating a fleet of vehicles like no other. Rather than simply asking his engineers to rework and improve an existing concept—which is generally the case with other vehicles—he asked them to start from scratch, rethinking everything from the design of the body to the configuration of the engine. This is precisely how many of Mazda’s proprietary concepts, including the SKYACTIV engine, the KODO design philosophy and G-Vectoring Control technology, came into being.

Mazda’s 100^th anniversary marks the brand’s success in overcoming challenges that were virtually unimaginable, like taking the rotary engine from the racetrack to the road. In 1967, Mazda achieved the impossible with the Cosmo sports car, after having demonstrated persistence and innovation. It was with a rotary engine that the Mazda 787B won the Le Mans automobile race in 1991—the first time an Asian manufacturer had ever won this venerable event.